Do you know who you are?

By Shelley Lieb and Ida Margolis

"I want to know who I am, so I need to know who you’ve been.” ~ Gabriela Garcia, author of “Women and Salt”

“If I don’t find out who they are, how will I know who I am?” ~ Eleanor Reissa, author of “The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey”

Children of Holocaust survivors may have many things in common, but there is one item that stands out as distinctly different. How open were the survivors to their children about their Holocaust experience? This distinction is probably true for any parent/child relationship, regardless of whether or not there is the trauma of genocide in the mix.

Louis Schmidt

Asking questions to one’s family members is one thing. Asking questions to complete strangers rises to another level. Louis Schmidt recently spoke in Southwest Florida about his experience as an interviewer of Holocaust survivors for the USC Shoah Foundation.

Schmidt started his career in the 1960s as a reporter at Look magazine, then became a senior producer for the NFL, where he won three Emmy and four Ace Awards and was the recipient of the silver medal from the International Film and Television Festival of New York. When Steven Spielberg announced, after he won the Oscar for “Schindler’s List” in 1994, that he was setting up a foundation to record interviews with 50,000 Holocaust survivors, Schmidt didn’t hesitate to contact him to get involved with the project. (https://sfi.usc.edu/search-page?search=louis+schmidt)

Marcela Katz Guggenheim visits the GenShoah SWFL table at Celebrate Israel @75.

“There is great power in remembrance,” says Schmidt, whose purpose as an interviewer was to preserve history by putting a human face on historic events. He was well-trained in both asking questions about horrific experiences and being objective in his responses.

In many instances, he was able to provide answers to the survivors’ families for questions they didn’t even know to ask.

Schmidt talked about the “painful, personal journeys through darkness … through the cobwebs of time” that he witnessed as an interviewer. Although he didn’t share the specific questions he asked, he was very clear to tell his current audience about the need for everyone to bear witness, quoting Elie Wiesel, “Whoever hears a witness, becomes a witness,” and Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than telling a story that is hidden within you.”

It is possible that some of us were afraid to ask those questions for fear of what might be unleashed. We weren’t sure how we would be able to respond.

If you attended the Yom HaShoah program in Naples last month, you saw a play about a local survivor’s story. Abe Price, like so many survivors, is no longer present. Schmidt reminded us that now, “…never again depends on you.”

Ida Margolis and Michael Gurtman & Fran Gurtman welcome inquiries about GenShoah SWFL at Celebrate Israel @75.

If you are from a Holocaust-impacted family, it is never too late to ask questions and search for answers. The questions may be as basic as finding out what hobbies your father had growing up or as difficult as finding out the exact names of your mother’s siblings who perished in Europe. Perhaps there is a cousin to your father who is still alive and who played with him as a child. Perhaps there is a ghetto identity card that lists all your mother’s siblings that is available on a website.

GenShoah SWFL brings together not just children of survivors (second generation), but anyone who finds resonance in the mission: Promoting Holocaust education and human rights, preserving the history and memories of the Holocaust, connecting with other second and third generation families, and supporting the Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center.

There are no fees. Just the opportunity to learn, be active and be together. To get on the membership list and receive ongoing information, contact genshoah@hmcec.org.